"The Day the World Stops Shopping: How Ending Consumerism Saves the Environment and Ourselves" by J. B. MacKinnon

 

Publisher: Random House Canada

Copyright: 2021

ISBN: 9780735275539

This was an extremely interesting book to read, and opened my eyes to a lot of things that go on in the world that I never really paid much attention to before. In addition the fact that it is so current takes into account the effects of the Covid 19 virus and how it has changed the world.

The book is divided into four sections First Days, Collapse, Adaption, and Transformation. As you can likely figure out the first talks about what would happen when people did stop shopping. Examples are given from various industries and how they coped or didn't when certain things such as the pandemic happened. It does however look at more than Covid and takes into account things like the Mideast oil embargo that happened in the early 1970s for example. One of the chapters in this section was very interesting and that dealt with the effects of stopping shopping on the climate. When for example residents of some of the world's most polluted cities saw clear blue sky. 

The second section deals a lot with the economics of stopping shopping and how this will effect both macro and micro economies. It takes a hard look at the Finnish Depression of the early 1990s. Then goes on to look at advertising, and how people will adapt to not shopping.

Adaption deals with as the title suggests how people will and have adapt(ed) to not shopping as much, and looks at the concept of planned obsolescence and how it has been forced upon us. It also looks at a couple of programs in England called Worn Again and Every On Every Day. 

The final section Transformation starts off by talking about whaling and how it decimated the population of Right Whales, and then talks about even when petroleum became common the whaling industry went into even higher production as they could now go further. It gave me a fair bit of insight into the way I consume things and I've found out that I would likely be considered a down-shifter, or a simplifier.

This was an extremely interesting book to read, and I plan on reading the others books that the author referenced within such as Vicki Robin's "Your Money or Your Life" and Michael Lee's "The Simple Living Guide."

"The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World" by Virginia Postrel

 

Publisher: Basic Books

Copyright: 2020

ISBN: 97815416117605

This book is without a doubt absolutely fascinating, it takes you on a guided tour through history of how textiles of all kinds were discovered, and developed. 

The first three chapters look at how fibres were developed, how the spinning industry made these into threads, then goes on to how cloth was made and how it developed throughout history.

After we humans had cloth Ms. Postrel goes on to examine the process of dyeing and the methods that were used historically, and then right up to modern day. She then moves on to looking at trading and how that affected the world over. This is a topic which is frequently and unfortunately glossed over in school as they typically mention only "The Silk Road", but trade was widespread throughout the world, and it is a shame that students aren't taught this type of thing, as maybe then they would have more of an appreciation of how the world works.

After trade her next focus is on consumers and how they see fabrics, how they guide the industry and influence changes in the market (and vice versa as well).

The last chapter deals with the innovators that are currently developing new and what I consider to be amazing fabrics. Such as ones that will allow sweat to easily evaporate from your skin thereby keeping your cool, but will also protect you from UV radiation. New fabrics, and new techniques that will result in a revolution in the fashion industry and the environment (for the better, I'm glad to note) when some of these hit the market.

An excellent book, highly recommended.

"Dollars and Sex: How Economics Influences Sex and Love" by Dr. Marina Adshade

Publisher:San Francisco : Chronicle Books
Copyright Date:©2013
ISBN: 9781452109220

I wasn't too sure what to expect, or how I would relate to this book when I started reading it, but it turned out to be extremely well written, and full of interesting facts and information regarding love and sex. Two things that the human species seems to spend a lot of time on.

I never took any economics courses when I was in university, but after reading this book I'm kind of sorry that I didn't as I find that the topic is quite interesting, especially the way it was presented in this book.

Dr. Adshade (an economics professor at UBC) deals with topics such as love in cyberspace (online dating), the institution of marriage in general, how the genders react to different influences, and love in the senior years, amongst others. Dr. Adshade deals with sensitive issues, with a sense of humour and quite a few years experience in researching and teaching a course on this topic. One that is very popular as you might well expect.

I found this to be an extremely interesting and informative book and would highly recommend it to all.

"Think Like A Freak" by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

Publisher: Toronto : HarperCollins, [2014]
Edition: First Canadian edition --.
Copyright Date: ©2014
ISBN: 9781443416511
Characteristics: xiii, 268 pages :,illustrations


This book is the third in the the Freakonomics series, and depending on whether you believe the authors or not may be the last. I never reviewed their first book "Freakonomics" as I'd read it a number of years ago before I started doing this reviewing thing, but I did review their second one "Superfreakonomics" in November 2017.

This book was also a delight to read, but it took a somewhat different approach that their previous two. In those books they essentially presented case studies of various things and then analyzed them based on the principals of microeconomics. This book however tells you how to approach new problems and analyze them from this perspective. As I mentioned above the authors sort of hint that this might be the last book in the series, but with all the weird stuff that goes on in the world, I hope it isn't. Their unique outlook on things is very different, and makes you think about what they have to say.

One of my favourite chapters was: "What do King Solomon and David Lee Roth Have in Common?" I'm not going to tell you what it is, but I'm pretty sure the answer will surprise you. The answer also makes me wish I'd taken some microeconomics courses in University.

Once again, just like in "Superfreakonomics" the chapters are relatively long so in order to grasp all that is being presented to you I would suggest you only read one chapter per day so that you have time to think about what they are saying.

Now that I've read this book I think it might be a good idea to reread "Freakonomics" just to remind myself what it was all about. I'll likely review it when I done, even though it will be published out of sequence.